Producer's Letter - July 2013
Greetings all! It has been a little while since I have posted a new Producer’s Letter and figured it was about time for another one describing what we’ve been up to as of late and what you can look forward to in the near to immediate future. If you haven’t had a chance to log into the game in a while you’ll probably notice that the new network layer is in. While this won’t solve all of the issues that we have had since the launch of Vanguard, what it will do is help us track down problematic areas of latency where we will be able to examine and resolve. Before this, we didn’t really have an adequate way of troubleshooting these issues. Over the next several weeks or longer you should see us post asking for players to help us test our certain encounters to track down more and more issues. Besides the network work that has been done we have also managed to provide several other updates. Let’s start with the myriad amount of long standing bugs that we have been going through and fixing. (Currently, we’ve fixed over fifty long standing bugs!) We understand that there are plenty more to nail down but each update you should be able to see more and more being tackled. As for larger content offerings, the first one that came out was Old Targonor. With Old Targonor, players were able to battle through new encounters and quests. This was produced with the plan to bridge the issue players had post 50 with content and gear. It also allowed us the ability to help groom future raiders by introducing entry level raid mechanics to several of the encounters. This week’s update brings changes to Falgarholm. Those of you familiar with the area can attest that this area was never really brought to the same level of polish that you would expect from Vanguard. As we still are gaining new players to Vanguard we need to continue to polish the existing world and provide a rock solid experience for these players as they journey through Telon. Although Falgarholm is not a high end zone, we haven’t forgotten about plans for our end game players. As some may remember from previous Producer Letters, I mentioned that we were working on Pankor Zhi. This area has not been forgotten about but is definitely going to be a long-term project for us. I would rather let you all know that as soon as we realize it as well rather than to have you expecting it to come sooner than later. With this said, there has been mention of us working on Cave of Wonders. I am here to let you all know that this is definitely the case. In the upcoming weeks you’ll hear more about what we have planned for the area, as well as testing that we will definitely need help with. This area is going to be something we all think you’ll be excited with, no matter which sphere is your favorite. With that said, I want to spend some time discussing what has been going on behind the scenes as of late. With several of the updates we’ve had lately we know that we’ve introduced some major issues. Obviously this is never our intent, but with some of the changes that we have been making to stacking rules and run speed there has been growing pains. Going forward, we will try and be more forthcoming with the information and communicate why we are doing what we feel is necessary to continue to develop for Vanguard. Continuing on the communications theme, we figured that it would probably be a good time to refresh everyone on where to post what. * /bug ** When it comes to reporting bugs in-game, please make use of the /bug command. We do read these and the more information you can give regarding what abilities you were using, what you may have had equipped, or anything else relevant to the issue would be appreciated. Please try and remember this as getting random petitions for lost items or any other GM related issue slows us down with fixing actual bugs in-game. * /petition ** This command is there to aid you when you really need to speak to a Game Master regarding a lost item, an issue with completing a quest, or any other in-game issue that renders your gaming experience to become less enjoyable. * Forums ** As many of you have already noticed, there are locations on the forums for support, news and announcements, and general game play discussions. We have started to update the Test forums with what is currently on the Test Server and hopefully many of you will start to read them more regularly. This will be where we ask for your help with testing larger scale items going forward. Lastly, as this Letter is starting to become a wall of text, we will be posting on the Developer Roundtable section of the forums this week with posts revolving around some of the recent changes and the reasoning behind them. Each topic will have its own posting and we would appreciate it if everyone stayed on the topic at hand as we know everyone wants the same thing in the end, to continue experiencing great things in Vanguard. We welcome you all to participate in the discussions and provide any and all constructive insight you may have in order to make this process as smooth and open as possible. As always, see you in-game, and for those attending SOE Live, we will see you next week! We have a lot in-store for those headed to SOE Live this year. Besides our exciting panels, we will be having a Live event as well. It is one I hope everyone that attends will take part in as it is something we thought would work well with what Vanguard is to us all. Harvey “Rahtiz” Burgess Producer, Vanguard Category: Producer's Letter